High Technology, World Development, and Structural Transformation: The Trends and the Debate

We have the privilege and the responsibility of living through one of the greatest technological revolutions in the history of humankind. Two major features characterize this technological revolution: i t is aimed at generating and processing information; its outcome is process-oriented and, therefore, its effects are pervasive, cutting across the entire realm of human activity. AS in all historical breaking points of scientific advancement, there is a whole constellation of discoveries taking place simultaneously, according to an interconnected, self-reinforcing pattern. Some of these discoveries concern new products, such as special materials; others are the technical application of existing technologies, such as space navigation and operation. Yet, the core of the current technological revolution resides in the ability to generate and process information, and to introduce such capacity into the actions and functions through which we work, produce, consume, manage, enjoy ourselves, live and die. What microelectronics does is to process information in increasingly powerful, yet decreasingly costly, miniaturized circuits. What computers do, on the basis of microelectronics, is to process, and eventually generate, information, at an even greater speed, and accuracy, with increasing capacity of memory, and with a broadening range of accessibility from non-expert knowledge to the computing system, thus decentralizing and

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